Need for Improved Action on Railroad Safety Recommendations

A study was made concerning: (1) the actions taken by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) in response to railroad safety recommendations made by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB); (2) NTSB followup procedures on railroad safety recommendations; and (3) FRA use of its own accident investigations to promote railroad safety.

FRA does not respond promptly to NTSB safety recommendations. In many cases, FRA has not responded to NTSB within 90 days or provided timetables for implementing recommendations, although this is required by law. FRA also does not adequately monitor actions promised by its operating units to carry out NTSB recommendations and does not inform NTSB or the Office of the Secretary of Transportation of important changes or delays to promised action. Although the Office of the Secretary of Transportation is responsible for assuring that the Department's operating administrations comply with statutory requirements related to NTSB recommendations, it neither monitors responses to recommendations nor explains the status of past open recommendations in its annual report. The Department and NTSB use different criteria for determining the status of recommendations; thus, the agencies do not always agree on whether FRA has completed action on NTSB recommendations.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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